Expect to Be Disgusted

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You learn the most from sitting down and doing the work, regularly, patiently, sometimes in hope, sometimes despairingly. When you have something that seems complete, show your work to people you trust to be honest but not malicious. Put it aside for six months and reread it. Expect to be disgusted by your own early work. If writing is your vocation, if you hope that it might be your salvation, push on through the disgust until you find one true sentence, a few words that say more than you expected, something you didn’t know until you set it down.

NAOMI ALDERMAN

Let Your Subject Find You

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Don’t go searching for a subject, let your subject find you. You can’t rush inspiration. How do you think Capote came to “In Cold Blood”? It was just an ordinary day when he picked up the paper to read his horoscope, and there it was — fate. Whether it’s a harrowing account of a multiple homicide, a botched Everest expedition or a colorful family of singers trying to escape from Austria when the Nazis invade, you can’t force it. Once your subject finds you, it’s like falling in love. It will be your constant companion. Shadowing you, peeping in your windows, calling you at all hours to leave messages like, “Only you understand me.” Your ideal subject should be like a stalker with limitless resources, living off the inheritance he received after the suspiciously sudden death of his father. He’s in your apartment pawing your stuff when you’re not around, using your toothbrush and cutting out all the really good synonyms from the thesaurus. Don’t be afraid: you have a best seller on your hands.

COLSON WHITEHEAD

Some of the Key Responsibilities of the Writer, According to Philip Pullman

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1. Make money

If we find we can make money writing books, by telling stories, we have the responsibility…of doing it as well and as profitably as we can.

2. Protect language

If human beings can protect the climate, we can certainly affect the language, and those of us who use it professionally are responsible for looking after it. 

3. Have tact

We who tell stories should be modest about the job, and not assume that because the reader is interested in the story, they’re interested in who’s telling it. A storyteller should be invisible, as far as I’m concerned.

4. Service the story

As the servant, I have to do what a good servant should. I have to be ready to attend to my work at regular hours…. I have to keep myself sober during working hours; I have to stay in good health.

The First Line

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A book won’t stand or fall on the very first line of prose – the story has got to be there, and that’s the real work. And yet a really good first line can do so much to establish that crucial sense of voice -- it’s the first thing that acquaints you, that makes you eager, that starts to enlist you for the long haul. So there’s incredible power in it, when you say, come in here. You want to know about this. And someone begins to listen.

STEPHEN KING

Writing Should Always Be Exploratory

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Writing should always be exploratory. There shouldn’t be the assumption that you know ahead of time what you want to express. When you enter into the dance with language, you’ll begin to find that there’s something before, or behind, or more absolute than the thing you thought you wanted to express. And as you work, other kinds of meaning emerge than what you might have expected. It’s like wrestling with the angel: On the one hand you feel the constraints of what can be said, but on the other hand you feel the infinite potential. There’s nothing more interesting than language and the problem of trying to bend it to your will, which you can never quite do. You can only find what it contains, which is always a surprise.

MARILYNNE ROBINSON

A Book Is Like a Shark

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I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle showed up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them.

NEIL GAIMAN

Finishing a Story

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Finishing a story is truly the most amazing experience in the world.… It’s like being on the most fantastic, perfect drugs. I feel like I can fly. Literally. Everything I’ve ever written has been finished around 3:00 in the morning — probably because I write at night — and when I’m done, I’m filled with so much adrenaline, I can hardly contain myself. I want to go running or dancing or find a trampoline.

ARYN KYLE

The Best Endings

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I think the best endings bring you back in, rather than close things off with absolute finality. I’m not saying they necessarily have to be ambiguous, but we don’t always need to know what happens when everyone wakes up tomorrow morning.… When I start a story, I don’t know what the ending will be in advance. I very much believe in working organically—that is, I don’t know what the story will be or what’s going to happen.

T.C. BOYLE

Language Is a Skin

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Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact: on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is "I desire you," and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand, I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure. 

ROLAND BARTHES